🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <james-2011950941130001@slip-21-7.ots.utexas.edu>,
James McCartney <james@astro.as.utexas.edu> wrote:
>In article <umisef.51.30B0765F@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au>,
>umisef@halls1.cc.monash.edu.au (Bernd MEYER - Bernie) wrote:
>
>> I might try sending a sructure through that pipe, instead of having
>> the printf and scanf functions there. It should speed things up 
>> tremendously.
>
>Be messages are not just structures, they are associative dictionaries
>which you can query for information of a certain type. If you just
>send a C struct through a pipe you have to know what it is you are
>receiving. A BMessage can be asked what it contains. Data is tagged
>by keyword and type.

  Hmm ..  Are there details of the message implementation in the 
BeBook on //www.be.com?  It seems at first glace like you could do
this by preceeding each structure with a structure which describes
that structure in a manner standardized across all applications.

  An interesting alternative method for IPC might be to allow
applications to create a structure in shared memory of the format:
  [control] [fields definition] [record1] [record2]..[recordn]

  Where [control] contained access semaphores, the number of
records in the structure, and pointers to the first and last
valid records (ie, making a circular queue), [fields definition]
contained a globally-understood structure defining the format
of the records, and records1..n were space for structures of the 
type defined in [fields definition].

  An entry for this shared memory structure could be placed in
a globally accessible table so that processes can sync, and once
a "connection" is made writing data to the queue would be as fast
as copying blocks between memory location (with a little overhead
for semaphore management).  It wouldn't be dynamic like the BeOS
messages, so it's not a replacement, but it would be a fast, cute
way of implementing record-based (as opposed to byte-based, like
in a pipe) IPC.

/---\ /---\ /=   /   ttk@rahul.net    CCS ZuulOS Development Labs
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                     e+ u+ h+*>++ f n+(++) y++*